To free it from these constituents, and enable it to yield pure and crystallisable sugar, the liquor, on entering the boiling-house, is received into the first of three clarifiers, of the capacity of from three hundred to a thousand gallons each. Here it is subjected to the action of lime-water, which checks the tendency to fermentation, and neutralises any free acid which it may contain. "The common defection process," says Mr. Fownes, "in careful hands, seems susceptible of little improvement. Many other substances than lime have been proposed and tried with more or less success, some of which, in particular states of the cane juice, may prove very useful; but, for general purposes, nothing seems to answer so well as neutralisation by lime, either in the form of lime-water or milk of lime, added until the slightest possible tendency to alkalinity, as ascertained by delicate reddened litmus paper, is perceived. The juice should be somewhat heated before the lime is added, and afterwards raised quite to the boiling point. The fire is then to be withdrawn, and the whole allowed to rest a short time." Such is Mr. Fownes' description of the process of clarification; to which I will venture to add, upon the authority of those who have experienced its good effects, the joint use of the mucilage of the _Guazuma ulmifolia_, or gun-stock tree, as it is popularly termed in Nevis from the use to which its timber has been applied. This is the bastard cedar of Jamaica, or Orme d'Amerique, and Bois d'Orme of the French, which may be found described by Lunan, in the first volume of his "Hortus Jamaicensis," page 59, under the name of _Bubroma Guazuma_.